A librarian's thoughts on current reads, libraries, and reading in general.

Losing Yourself to Alaska

I recently wrote about a book I read called The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan, which was a war story set in Alaska, featuring some possible otherworldliness. Years ago, I read Into the Wildby Jon Krakauer, about a young man who vanished into the wilds of Alaska. During my weekend reading, I came up on this article about a brutal race in an Alaska town, where one man, way behind everyone else, just disappeared from the race track in the mountain.

This same weekend, I had started reading The Snow Child,by Eowyn Ivey. It’s set in Alaska in the 1920s. The thing all these stories have in common is this underlying idea that Alaska itself is not just a wild place of nature – it is beautiful but hostile, almost alive, almost supernatural.

Each of these tales reminds the reader that there is this very large area of land out there that we have not yet tamed. And though almost cautionary, they are a bit of a love story to that wildness. There is a celebration of how precious life and living is, despite, or in spite of, this land around that is constantly trying to trip you up, to take you back into itself.

The Snow Child is a Ivey’s first novel (here is a more in-depth review from the Washington Post), and it’s beautifully written. It’s a fairy tale for grownups, based on a Russian folk tale about a couple who builds a snowchild , who then comes to life. The Russian tale ends various sad ways, and Ivey’s Snow Child is no different.

It’s sad and haunting, but like life, the sadnesses are tempered by the joys – of discovering and rediscovering love, hugging children, listening to laughter, cooking for friends, realizing you can survive so much sadness… Though infused with a touch of magic, the story is about very real, very human, feelings and experiences. And the way Ivey writes about those experiences, the way she strings words together to form these descriptive, beautiful sentences, she draws you in and makes you glad to enter her world a while, even if you’re a little (or a lot) teary when you leave it.